Valentino Mazzia

Who was Valentino Mazzia?

Valentino D. B. Mazzia was an American physician who served as chairman of the department of anesthesiology at the New York University School of Medicine and was a pioneer in the forensic analysis of deaths occurring during surgical procedures. He testified in many criminal cases about the use and presence of anesthesia products in cases of death.

Mazzia was born on February 17, 1922 in New York City and graduated from City College of New York in 1943. He attended New York University School of Medicine earning his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1950. He was on the faculty of Cornell University Medical School in the 1950s as chaired the anesthesiology department at New York University starting in the 1960s.

Starting in 1961, he worked at the New York City Medical Examiner's Office under Drs. Michael Baden and Milton Helpern. Baden credited Mazzia with going on to "create the specialty of forensic anesthesiology" describing how Mazzia would go "to the scene, which was the operating room, to see if something went wrong", closing off the room for investigation and basing his judgments on his findings on the spot. He left the medical examiner's office in the early 1970s. He then spent two years as director of anesthesiology at Los Angeles County-Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital and practiced medicine in California and Nevada.